I am not only middle class, but I match the cultural stereotype of a good
white person. It is thus perhaps that the loan officer of this bank, whom I had
never met in person, had checked off the box on the Fair Housing Form
indicating that I was white. [LAUGHTER]

Race shouldn't matter, I suppose, but it seemed to in this case so I took
a deep breath, I crossed out white, I checked the box marked black and sent the
contract back to the bank. That will teach them to presume too much, I thought.
A done deal, I assumed. Suddenly the deal came screeching to a halt. The bank
wanted more money as a down payment. They wanted me to pay more points,
as
certain charges are called, they wanted to raise the
rate of interest. Suddenly I found myself facing great resistance and much
more debt.

What was interesting about all of this was that the reason the bank gave
for its new found recalcitrance was not race, heaven forbid. Haven't I heard
racism doesn't exist any more? [LAUGHTER] No, the reason they gave was that
property values in that neighborhood were suddenly falling. They wanted more
money to cover the increased risk.

Initially I was surprised, confused.

The houses in the neighborhood was extremely stable. Prices hadn't gone
down since World War II. [LAUGHTER] It took my real estate agent to make me see
the light. Don't you get it, he sighed, this is
what they always do. And even though I work with this sort of thing all the
time I really hadn't gotten it, for of course I was the reason the prices were
in peril. The bank was proceeding according to
demographic data that show anytime black people move into a neighborhood
whites are overwhelmingly likely to move out, in droves, in panic, in concert,
pulling every imaginable resource with them from school funding to garbage
collection to police whose too frequent relation to black communities becomes
one of
containment rather than protection.

It's called a tipping point, this thing that happens when black people move
into white neighborhoods. The imagery is awfully trashy, you have to admit.
They were just tipping right on over like a terrible accident. Oops. [LAUGHTER]
Like a pitcher, I suppose. All that fresh wholesome milk spilling out, running
away [LAUGHTER] leaving the dark [UNINTEL] upended urn of the inner city.

This immense fear of "the Black" is one reason the United States is so
densely segregated. Only 2% of white people have a black neighbor even though
black people comprise approximately 13%. Whites seemto fear black people in big
ways and small ways and in financial ways, in utterly incomprehensible ways.
Now, as for my mortgage, using the Fair Housing Act I threatened to sue unless
they proferred the loan on the original terms. What was fascinating to me was
the way in which this so exemplified the new problem of the new rhetoric of
racism. For starters the new rhetoric of racism never
mentions race. It wasn't race but risk with which the bank was
concerned.

Secondly, since financial risk is all about economics my
exclusion got reclassified as just a consideration of class and
there's no law again class discrimination after all because that
would represent a restraint of one of our most precious liberties,
the freedom to contract or not. It's no longer a
racial problem if someone who just happens to be white keeps
hiking the price for someone who just accidentally purely by the
way happens to be black. Black people pay higher prices as a
result, for the attempt to integrate even as
the integration of oneself is a threat to one's
investment by lowering its value. By this measure of one's
worthiness the ingredient of blackness is cast not just as a
social toll but as an actual tax, a fee, an extra contribution at
the door, an admission price, the higher costs of
handling my dangerous propensities, my inherently unsavory
properties.

Now, I was judged based not on my independent
attributes or individual financial worth as a client, nor even
was I judged by statistical profiles of what my group actually
do. For in fact, anxiety stricken middle class black people make
grovingly good cake-baking neighbors when made not to feel
defensive by the unfortunate historical welcoming strategies of
.......[LAUGHTER] [APPLAUSE] Rather, I was being evaluated based on what an
abstraction of white society writ large thinks we or I do, and that imagined
doing was treated and thus established as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However rationalized this form of discrimination it's a burden. One's very
existence becomes a lonely vacuum when so many in society not only devalue me
but devalue themselves and their homes for having me as part of the landscape
view from the quiet of their breakfast nook. I know, I know. I exist in the
world on my own terms surely. I am an individual and all that. But if I carry
the bags of logic out with my individuality rather than my collectively
imagined effect on property values as the subject of this type of irrational
economic connotation then I, the charming and delightful Patricia J. Williams,
because a bit like a car wash in your back yard only much worsein real
price terms. I am more than a mere violation of the nice residential comforts
in question. My blackness can rezone them altogether by the mere fortuity of my
location. [UNINTEL], cringes the nice clean [UNINTEL] family next door. There
goes the neighborhood. As whole geographic tracts slide into the chasm
[UNINTEL] and disgust. I am the equvalent of a medical waste disposal site, a
toxic hole. In my brand new house I hover behind my brand new kitchen curtains
wondering whether the very appearance of myself will endanger my collateral
even further. Will the presentation of myself disperse the value of my home, my
ownership, my property? This is madness I am sure, as I draw the curtain like a
veil across my nose. In what order of things is it rational to thus hide and
skulk? It's an intolerable logic. An investment in my property compels selling
of myself. [APPLAUSE]